On to the Playoffs

Now that the Hawks have finished the regular season, and finished it with a nice consistent run of play, they can start preparing for the Spokane Chiefs. This will be one heck of a first round match up... But lets look back before looking ahead shall we?

Ten days ago the Hawk faithful were looking at recent play and were grumbling about how this team was stumbling through the final days of the season. Portland had games with TC, Spokane and Everett at home and were really flat against TC and then Spokane. Ian and Mac both seemed to not be sure as to who was going to be the guy in net and the team was not playing with the same confidence they had earlier in the season. Then... Saturday night in the Garden, Mac got a chance to play against TC, the same TC who had scored 3 times in 52 seconds the last time Mac was in net, and for whatever reason Portland came with a renewed fire and beat TC. All seemed correct in Hawkeytown... Since that game, Portland and Mac have not dropped a game. Confidence is going sky high.

Any time a team is switching gears into post season play, you want three things.

1 - You want a goal tender who is hot and playing with extreme confidence. Portland has that right now in 17 year old Mac Carruth. He has taken over between the pipes and for whatever reason the team seems to be playing off his energy.

2 - You want to have roles defined for players on your team and you want them playing those roles with confidence. Coach Johnston seems to have settled on lines and players have bought in to the roles assigned to them. This team seems to believe in each other right now and players are confident in their assigned roles.

3 - You want to be healthy... For the most part Portland is a healthy team. Eric Doyle is still out from that wicked hit in TC, but the rest of the roster seems ready to go.

Overall Portland is back into the playoffs, finishing with 91 points, good enough for the 4 best in the West, but since Vancouver is in first in the BC Division they get the 2nd seed, dropping Portland into the 5th seed. Stay tuned for the play off schedule. Spokane will most likely open on the road at Portland because they do not have their arena next weekend as they will be hosting first round games for the upcoming NCAA Basket Ball tourney. So, as of now it looks like Portland gets the first two at home even though Spokane is the higher seed. Most likely it will be a 2 - 3 - 1 - 1 match up...

The other thing to watch is tonight's Spokane - Everett game in Spokane has big implications as if Everett gets 1 point they win the US and West, if not they tie TC for points, but TC gets the US and West...

Here we go into the post season, should be exciting!